My driver's license expires at the end of the month; I decided that I'd better stop procrastinating and get over to the DMV today, since it will likely be even more of a madhouse than usual next Saturday, which is the last day of the month. They open at 8 am, so I knew I was going to have to try and drag myself out of bed a lot earlier than I would have liked on a rainy Saturday morning, in order to avoid as much of the crowd as possible.
Knowing that I'd be stuck with the photo for the next four years, I made sure that I had my goatee trimmed yesterday and that my head and face were shaved before I left the house this morning. I needn't have bothered, though, since when I finally got through the line after 45 minutes and shown my three forms of ID to three different clueless DMV employees, they pulled up the photo from my previous photo on the computer and asked if I wanted to use the same one again. Since it was actually a decent photo, and since I haven't changed much and just wanted to get the hell out of there ASAP, I said OK. If the same photo can be reused, I really wonder why they won't do license renewals through the mail, like vehicle registration renewals are handled in New Jersey.
At one point, the woman behind the counter directed me to a different line halfway across the room. A few minutes later, I heard her telling the woman who had been standing behind me to get into the same line, "behind the gentleman with the black T-shirt and bald head." There was a sly guy ahead of me in the line; I wonder why she didn't tell me to go stand behind the gentleman with the white T-shirt and bald head.
